Mike Dawson

I recently took up detecting again to go camping under the stars with my new Russian wife and also pursue an interesting hobby at the same time.We have been travelling around Europe,Russia and Turkey for 3 years and now its time to settle down.She is very handy at campfire cooking,setting up camp,tending the fire and folding the tent and tarpaulin back up ever so neatly,whereas I just screw them up into a ball.She has that inner strength and boundless optimism that ensures any camping expedition a success.She is also a qualified battlefield nurse and can amputate limbs but I sincerely hope that will not be needed.Hey where would we be without them?The best part about rough prospecting is it keeps your body young and keeps you from aging.I felt a lot fitter after camping out and detecting for 10 straight days.Its all about the journey and experiences you get and the places you visit looking for gold and not necessary the bucks at the end of it all.Any gold found would be appreciated to pay for petrol on the long drive to the Western Australian goldfields in 2018.Sounds like that guy was a an amusing typical oldtimer character.Looking forward to meeting some crusty old timer to have a yarn with out on the diggings.We used to have the bush grapevine here and the latest finds were passed on by word of mouth but the latest generation of prospectors are much more secretive.

What a blessing,ground without leaves or branches.Steve are you using the small coil because the ground is full of trash or mainly looking for smaller gold?

Steve,you said you have only used the Impact in a park so far,but you will see how good it really is when or if you use it on your Nevada goldfields,I went out yesterday detecting South of Ballarat to a small place called Durham Lead.All farmland but I headed into the forest and found a small patch of diggings.Low min. level on the meter.The Impact gave a loud growl straight away indicating I had found iron or a hotrock..Please confirm it dear and my wife dug as far as a large rock,ok dear don,t worry. Next I got a good signal in GEN indicating non ferrous.I dug down 4 inches and eventually found a small sliver of black metal without rust which was probably high grade steel and flaked off something like a crowbar.It was 3/8 inch long and 1/16 inch wide at most and may have weighed about 0.1 gram.All this took me 30 minutes of sifting with the plastic scoop and intense concentration.Do I really want to detect objects so small?.Really even with the 11 inch coil the Impact is finding really tiny metal flakes that takes so much time and patience to locate with the naked eye.I really need those head mounted magnifying scopes that surgeons use.

The 28 cm open black Nokta coil provided with the Impact standard package is ideal for gold prospecting on the bare soils covered with gum leaves of the Victorian and WA goldfields in Australia.Only occasionally you get a twig caught up in the spaces,but the lightness of the coil is the big advantage.Personally I would have prefered a bigger coil as standard for prospecting for our larger nuggets,maybe 13.5 inches so I would not have to buy the 15.5 inch coil as an added expense so quickly.I am sure it would go deeper.

I got it early June .When I press + and - simultaneously and turn it on I get 01 on the major screen and 13 and then 11 on the minor screen.A bit confusing.Mine was recalled from the shipping point at the factory and then unpacked and updated and then repacked.Maybe the 13 means the later version update and the 11 the earlier version installed.

The good thing about gold prospecting is getting away from it all and camping next to the diggings.I prefer the company of falling trees in the night under canvas.

Steve I have not yet found I needed to lower the 20Khz frequency just to make the Impact more stable operating in the heart of the Golden Triangle so far after only 30 hours of detecting, and I was using the default settings in GEN mode except for the 14 Khz frequency.But I usually get a quick feel for a machine and after 2-3 days use and will know if it will be a goer.There is nothing to put you off with the Impact,its superb good looks and balance,lack of unsightly wrap around coil,the easy to use selection menu,all these things build up your confidence.Oh and I discarded the armband.as the optimum balance makes it superfluous.If it can live with me it must be good as believe you me I get very irate about bad design and performance as I am a professional mechanical engineer.After 20 hours use the batteries were only half flat.The good stability on our goldfields is an added bonus which I had not really expected to tell the truth.The Impact did overload when it encountered extreme patches of mineralisation but so did the PI detector next to me about 300 feet away and it was NOISY .But these patches were more prevalent in only one gully.Slipping it in COG mode may have fixed that and any shallow nuggets may be found in these patches. Recently I tested the Impact in my back yard on a one gram gold specimen and found the VLX2 mode reacted to it very differently than the GEN mode.Whilst the GEN mode signal became more broader as the distance in air was increased and eventually resembled ground noise,in the VLX2 mode the signal remained spiked even at distance and did not change. I cut my teeth on a Whites 5000D many years ago and found the addition of a 16 inch coil enabled me to find many more larger nuggets ( up to 3 oz.) than I had found with the standard 8 inch coil.It may have become a little more unstable but it certainly went deeper also.I feel I need to buy the 15.5 inch Impact coil to gain that extra advantage.I can just smell that half oz. nugget coming.After reading your comments about devoting 50% of the time detecting virgin ground I feel it makes sense to add the large coil for faster ground coverage and also not to miss any deeper larger nuggets.

Thanks for the warm welcome Steve.I also found your posts on operating the 15.5 inch Im 40 coil on the Impact, and prospecting for nuggets in Nevada very interesting.

Got delivery of a Nokta Impact detector early June after it was unpacked by Nokta at the shipping point and the latest software version installed and then repacked.Two week delay but worth it.First impression of the unit on the first day of use was one of amazement on how stable it was on our very heavily mineralised ground on our goldfields.I had reservations before that it would be tough going for the Impact but happily these did come to reality.The auto GB was very easy to do and the unit only needed to re balanced every 15 minutes just to make sure.I would recommend this procedure in very heavily mineralised soil. On the second day I was mostly using the GEN mode and on the fourth day I got sick of digging up all the hot rocks and turned up discrimination in GEN mode to its minimum setting of 01.That way I got normal tones when sweeping at normal speed on hot rocks but when checking out the signal and sweeping slowly I got the iron low tone.As a novice user I did not have to change the settings except to increase the frequency to 20 Khz more suited for gold,as the settings are optimized for each mode.Isat setting was left at default of 06 and gain at 70.In the discrimination modes the extreme patches of mineralisation which were 2 feet in diameter gave a target response,but in GEN mode these came up as a broad patch and not a spiked signal so were clearly not genuine targets.It may be possible to eliminate this target response in the disc. modes by altering the settings so I would appreciate getting any feedback from other prospectors on this subject.This VLF detector is clearly marketed by Nokta as a coin and relic hunting detector for use in parks and on beaches but can also be used on goldfields for hunting nuggets.Fitting the larger 16 inch Im40 coil will give more faster coverage of terrain but in heavily mineralised ground it would not necessarily give greater depth although from previous experience adding a 16 inch coil on an old Whites detector turned it into a mean nugget hunter in the days when larger nuggets were still plentiful..Further I would like to point out that higher frequency machines are better for finding sub gram nuggets but in heavily mineralised ground are more unstable.Fitting large coils on these machines may incur penalties such as higher instability in these conditions.I did encounter a huge patch of extreme ground on top of a hill only once in 30 odd hours of detecting but switched the unit to COG mode.Unfortunately I could not continue in COG mode as we spent 2 hours on top of this hill and my wife got cold and wanted to leave.I had found a 1/4 and 1/2 oz. nuggets on top of this small hill previously with an old Whites detector so must investigate this patch further with the COG mode.This hill produced lots of surface nuggets during the goldrush and the west side has been surfaced down to bedrock on the top and to pipeclay on the side of the hill,so basalt lying on top of pipeclay.Further south towards a small town called Dunolly there are numerous shallow gullies which produced lots of large nuggets and also dozens of gold reefs.Even further south just north of a large town called Maryborough there are diggings at Simons where diggers had to penetrate a layer of basalt to get to the numerous nuggets which were lying on top of pipeclay.A large nugget was found near Dunolly 2 months ago by a prospector which was about 4 kilograms in weight.At Maryborough there is a main street full of shops built over the main lead which is estimated to still contain lots of gold.At Wedderburn a town at the northern tip of the Golden Triangle residents ripped up the main street in the 1950,s looking for gold.Such is gold fever.

Hi Ricardo, For US$850 buying the Impact you are getting a brand new machine with the latest technology from a company committed to producing world class detectors at a very affordable price.I got my Impact early June with the latest software version and have spent 30 odd hours using it in the Golden Triangle,Victoria,Australia, an area famed for producing the worlds biggest gold nuggets.To me it is all about how stable a detector is in our very highly mineralised ground that we have here if it is going to have a chance of finding gold nuggets.After the first day I was simply amazed at how stable the Nokta Impact was on our goldfields.For the novice user the default settings are optimized for each mode so the unit is very easy to use.However using it in parks and beaches for coin and relic hunting as this unit is clearly marketed for is very different to gold prospecting, and different settings and a different approach may be called for. I prefered to listen to the threshold sound in GEN mode when hunting for nuggets as the highly mineralised small patches of about 2 feet long can be easily identified against a genuine metal target which gives a spiked signal and thus I acquired the initial confidence as a novice using the Impact in our very trying conditions.I later got sick of digging up all the hot rocks and decided to turn the discrimination setting in GEN mode up to its minimum setting of 01.Thus when I swept over a hot rock I got the normal signal but when I slowly swept over it I got the iron low tone. After a while I tested the VLX2 mode at 20 Khz on a 1 gram gold specimen and it gave a faint but spiked signal at a fair distance in air whereas GEN became more broader as you increase the distance, something to consider when you get lots of faint signals.The 20 Khz is very sensitive to small gold of about 1 gram size as against 14 Khz. which will give a weaker signal in air at the same distance.Bear in mind the higher frequency machines will find very fine gold better but they are susceptible to the high mineralisation found in most goldfields and they will not be as stable.Also using larger coils on these machines will incur penalties of instability.So all round 20 Khz is ideal in very highly mineralised ground.When the ground becomes extreme you have the option with the Impact to lower the frequency to 14 Khz. or even 5Khz. and still keep the gain at a reasonable level. Where the Impact overloaded in a large patch of extreme ground I opted for the COG mode but that only happened once.